Читать книгу Till the Sun Shines Through - Anne Bennett - Страница 7

Almost as soon as Terry picked Bridie up at the docks three weeks later, she knew there was something wrong with him. But she also knew to press him would only annoy and so she waited for him to tell her.

She hadn’t long to wait: Terry was bursting to tell somebody his news and as soon as they were seated on the train, he couldn’t contain himself. Bridie looked at him in astonishment. ‘Leave the farm? But, Terry …’

‘Hear me out first,’ Terry said, ‘and then judge if you want to, Bridie.’

Bridie nodded and Terry went on. ‘Look at me – I’m twenty years old in a week’s time, I never go out, I’ve never dated a girl in all my life and why? Because I never get a penny piece of my own, that’s why. Oh, they point out, Mam and Dad, that this place will be mine one day – Seamus will hardly want it – and they remind me I have a warm house and plenty of food and clothes bought for me when I need them. Aye, I do, working clothes and a suit for Mass that I never even get to choose the colour and style of.

‘I can’t stand it, I tell you, Bridie. I don’t like farming anyway, never have, and I won’t grub around in this place for much longer, with Mammy doling out small amounts of money to me for the collection at Mass as if I was a wean.’

Bridie saw some of the injustices of Terry’s predicament that she’d never realised before. ‘Oh, Terry,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you tell Mammy and Daddy how you feel?’

‘Do you think I haven’t tried?’ Terry snapped. ‘It’s like talking to a brick wall.’

‘But where will you go?’

‘New York,’ Terry said. ‘Seamus and Johnnie said they’d send me the fare.’

‘But what about a job?’ Bridie said, for she knew as well as any that unemployment was rife everywhere since the Great War and getting worse. ‘It’s as bad there as here. Worse, in fact. They have soup kitchens in America, Terry.’

‘I know,’ Terry said. ‘That’s the threat Mam and Dad use when I’ve mentioned it to them. Not that I’ve said that much, you know. I’ve just tested the ground as it were. I wrote to Johnnie and he said he can probably get me set on alongside him in time. There’s nothing for now, but he’s keeping an eye out and will send for me. I’m willing to work. I’ll not go to America and live off him and Seamus, never fear. All I’m waiting for is word and the money for the fare.’

Bridie knew then that eventually Terry would go. It might be weeks or even months, but he wouldn’t stay.

However, the weeks rolled by and soon winter was upon them again and still no word came from America. Still and all, Bridie told herself, there might not be a place in America for Terry for a long while. She couldn’t imagine Johnnie and Seamus to be the only Irish boys with relations clamouring to join them. The dole queues in America were as long as those anywhere else and why would they take another person into the country when it made more sense to employ one of their own?

That winter proved to be a severe one and both Jimmy and Francis were worried about their pregnant ewes. Rosalyn came over one day and complained how bad-tempered her father had become lately. Bridie expressed surprise – Francis usually had a smile on his face and had a far more relaxed attitude to life than his brother Jimmy.

They were, as usual, in the barn and Rosalyn peered out of the barn window as she said, ‘Poor things to be born in this anyway.’ She rubbed at the window with a mittened hand, clearing the ice. ‘I mean just look at it,’ she said. The landscape before them was covered in snow blown into drifts at the sides of the fields and gilding the trees and hedges.

Bridie shivered, despite her thick coat. ‘Aye, you’d think they’d wait till spring is really here and the snow had at least disappeared,’ she said. ‘I think God slipped up there.’

Rosalyn gave her a push. ‘Don’t let the priest hear you say that, Bridie McCarthy,’ she said in mock severity while her eyes twinkled. ‘You’ll spend the rest of your life on your knees repenting, you will.’

‘Aye? Well, I’ll say one for you when I’m down there,’ Bridie promised with a smile.

But in all truth there was not much to smile about during those bitterly cold days and the only bright news at all that awful January was that Mary had given birth to a baby and named him Jamie after her father. Jimmy was ridiculously pleased by the gesture and that evening talked of Mary coming home when the baby was a bit older. ‘Show me my namesake,’ he said with a broad grin.

Bridie was glad to see that smile; for far too long her father had had a frown creasing his brow. It was a pity, then, that Terry had to spoil it. ‘Aye, that’s right. Get another one back here that you can chain to the bloody land.’

‘I chain nobody, boy.’

‘Yes you bloody do,’ Terry said, leaping up and reaching for his coat.

‘Where are you going? There’s work to do.’

‘Oh,’ said Terry in mock surprise. ‘You surprise me! Work, is there? Well, get some other silly bugger to do it. I’m away out.’

‘Terry! Come back here!’

As the door slammed shut, Bridie looked fearfully at her father, but he made no effort to follow his wayward son. The peat in the fire settled and hissed and the clock’s tick seemed very loud. Everyone seemed fearful of breaking the silence and Bridie picked up a sock from the mending basket by her mother’s feet and began to darn the large hole in the heel.

By mid-March, the long months of the winter were behind them. The snow and ice were long gone, the lambs had all been born fine and healthy and spring planting was going on apace. The sun was shining in a bright blue sky and Bridie, having celebrated her fourteenth birthday in February, felt happy with her world.

She was, however, rather at a loose end. It was a Saturday and also a Fair Day in the town, where the farmers bought and sold their stock. Terry and her daddy had gone in early with some calves to sell. They’d offered her a lift into town, but she’d said she’d not felt like it that day but then, calling to see Rosalyn, she found she’d also gone into town with her own brother and father very early that morning. ‘She thought you’d be gone in too,’ said Delia.

‘No,’ Bridie said. ‘Daddy offered, but I didn’t fancy it today. Never mind, I’ll see Rosalyn later.’

After helping her mother all morning, she’d been too fidgety to stay in and had gone out tramping the hills later that afternoon. Everyone seemed either to be indoors or in town because she met not a soul and so was pleased on her return to see her uncle Francis approaching her as she neared the outskirts of the farm. She waved to him.

It was as she got nearer that she noticed his strange gait, his slightly glazed eyes and slack mouth, and she realised that her uncle was drunk. She wasn’t totally surprised. He’d been in the town for many hours and the bars, open all day, would be thronged with friends and acquaintances with nothing to do for hours but drink and reminisce. Many men, her father included, would probably be the worse for wear that day.

‘And how’s my favourite girl today?’ Francis cried.

‘Ah, then it must be me you’re talking about since there’s not another soul around for miles,’ Bridie answered with a laugh.

In two strides, Francis was alongside his niece. ‘God, Bridie, but you’re a sight for sore eyes,’ he said. His voice was husky and thick and the way he was looking at her was sending shivers of alarm down her spine. She told herself not to be stupid. This was Francis who she’d known all her life. Dear God! There was no need to be nervous of him. He’d got drunk and was acting oddly, that was all.

‘Hush, Uncle Francis,’ she said in a voice she forced to be steady. ‘You’ll have my head swelling and I’ll not get in the door.’

Francis, his mind addled by the many pints of ale he’d drank that day, was confused. Bridie was his niece and yet he wasn’t seeing her as a niece, but as a desirable young lady and one he’d secretly lusted after for months. It was a fact he’d kept hidden from everyone and the guilt had made him short-tempered with them all at home.

But now here she was, all alone and not a soul about. He grabbed her around the waist and, stunned, she made no protest until he held her against him, his hand clamped against her back. Bridie remembered what Mary had told her about men and women just the previous summer and when she felt the hardness of her uncle she knew what it was that he was pressing against her. She was suddenly aware of every bit of him and she started to wriggle and protest.

Francis’s thick lips descended on Bridie’s, holding her so tight she was unable to get away. When she felt her uncle’s hand trailing up her leg, she was filled with panic. Lifting her foot, she stamped on his toes with all her might and Francis, taken unawares, slackened his hold slightly and she was able to twist out of his grasp. She stood facing him, her eyes sparkling with anger, and her chest heaving. ‘What d’you think you’re doing, Uncle Francis?’

Francis was angry with himself. What had compelled him to grab Bridie like that? He’d fought the attraction this long while and now … now, to give in like this. But it would never do for her, for anyone, to guess his thoughts and so he answered angrily:

‘What d’you mean, what am I doing? You could see what I was doing, giving you a kiss and cuddle, as I’ve done since you were a child. There was no need to make such a fuss and near lame me in the process.’

Doubts began to creep into Bridie’s mind. Had she read too much into what Francis had done? True, the kiss was one he’d never given her before and she hadn’t liked it much, but that could have been because he was drunk. It could all have been down to the drink. Maybe she’d exaggerated the whole thing. She must have done, she told herself, for her uncle Francis would never hurt her, she was sure of that.

She felt rather silly as she said softly, ‘I’m sorry, Uncle Francis. I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘Yes, well, we’ll say no more about it,’ Francis said. ‘I might have surprised you a wee bit and I’ve been drinking all day.’

Relief flooded through Bridie. That was it then. She’d been foolish. ‘You’ll not tell them at home, sure you won’t?’ she asked her uncle.

‘Not a bit of it,’ Francis replied. ‘Don’t fresh yourself. This will be just between us two.’

But for all Bridie’s relief, she tried to make sure after that that she was never alone with her uncle, especially when he’d taken a drink, for she saw his eyes on her, sometimes in a most disturbing way. She never tramped the hills again either and, on Fair Days, she either stayed around the farmhouse with her mother, or went into the town with her father and stuck like glue to Rosalyn.

She finished school in June and Sarah told her to have a wee holiday before looking for a job. Bridie hadn’t forgotten Terry’s threat, but it had been so long now with never a word that she’d pushed it to the back of her mind. She told herself it might be years before Terry was able to go to America.

She really wanted a job in the shirt factory in town beside Rosalyn, but she knew if Terry did leave, a job off the farm would be out of the question. It was too big for her father to manage on his own and she’d be the only one of the family left then. She’d have to stay and help him. Because she was the youngest and so small, she’d been protected from much of the work. Now, she faced the fact that if she was to be of any help to her father and not a hindrance altogether, she would have to learn, and fast, for farms carried few passengers.

She began to tail Terry as he went about his jobs and Terry, admiring her guts and determination, took time to teach her, even though he worried that some of the work might be too much for her.

‘Talk Daddy into getting someone in to help once I’ve gone,’ he told her one day. ‘I’m going to tell him you can’t manage because I don’t really think you’ll be able to do all I do. And for God’s sake, if you’re determined to take on the farm, stick out for a proper wage. It’s only fair and it’s important to have money in your pocket.’

Bridie knew all Terry said was true, but she couldn’t see her daddy hiring help. It went against his principles of it being a family farm. Maybe she’d grow a wee bit more yet before Terry was ready to leave and there was always Frank within calling distance. She was sure he’d give her a hand if she needed it. Rosalyn always said he had a soft spot for her. The point about a wage, however, was a good one. One reason for getting a job, as well as helping the family out, was to have money to spend as she wished.

One day in late July, when the warm sun shone in a sky of Wedgewood blue, Terry was working in the fields when he saw the postman, Abel Maloney, turn in the lane. It wasn’t that unusual, so Terry took little notice, until Abel hailed him. Almost every week, Abel carried letters to the McCarthy house from their sons in America and he knew their writing well, so he said to Terry, ‘Your brothers are after writing to you now too.’

Terry stared at the man for a second or two before the significance of what he said caused him to throw down his spade, leap the hedge and take the letter from his outstretched hand. He went to the privy – the only place he could think of where he wouldn’t be disturbed – and ripped the envelope open.

Dollar bills were folded inside the letter and Terry stuffed those into the pockets of his breeches and smoothed out the sheet of paper.

Okay kiddo,

I just might have a job for you at last. The factory are setting up new lines making waterproof mackintoshes and they’ll be up and running in three weeks or so. I’ll put your name forward, but there would be hundreds after each vacancy, so there is no way I can hold it for you and there will be a damned long wait for anything else if you let this one go. I presume you have primed Mammy and Daddy what you intended to do when the time was right so I advise you to waste no time in buying a ticket and getting your arse over here pronto. See you soon hopefully.

All the best

Johnnie

Excitement leapt inside Terry initially and then reality struck. It was about the very worst time to leave the farm with not even the hay gathered in. But then was there ever a good time to leave a farm? And as Johnnie said, if he passed this offer up, then he might as well say goodbye to his dreams of going to America altogether. Johnnie thought he must have discussed the possibility of him joining his brothers with their parents, but though they’d both sensed his dissatisfaction, the idea that he might leave the farm had never occurred to them and Terry wished now he’d given some hint of it. Well, he thought, that can soon be remedied. The sooner he told them the better for speed was of the essence, so he squared his shoulders and made his way to the farmhouse.

The resultant row was so fast and furious that Bridie fled to the bedroom and buried her head beneath the bedclothes. Sarah pleaded and cried and Jimmy thundered and roared while Terry shouted back. Francis and Delia were brought in to try to talk some sense into the boy and the following day Father O’Dwyer was called.

By then, Terry was barely speaking to his parents, but his determination to leave had not been altered at all though everyone had thought and said he was wrong, ungrateful, neglecting his filial duty. His parents, their farm and their welfare were, they said, his responsibility. Who was to help them now if he ran away like this? Surely to God he couldn’t expect his wee sister to take up the reins?

Bridie tried to keep out of it. She wanted no one to see the tears she shed, for it would be just another stick to beat Terry with. She knew she’d miss him more than anyone – it had been just the two of them for so long and she knew she’d be lonely. It wouldn’t have mattered so much if she’d been going into town to work; then there would have been Rosalyn and other girls to talk to through the day, but she knew it would be the loneliness as well as the workload that might wear her down now.

‘Do you hate me, Bridie?’ Terry asked, coming across her in the barn in tears. He’d fought all the people that opposed him and pleaded with him and yet it was Bridie, who had said so little, who played on his mind.

Bridie raised her face, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She knew Terry had his ticket and would be leaving in the next few days and she wanted to bang her little fists on his chest and tell him he couldn’t go. What was he thinking of to leave her like this?

But how could she let her brother go with only recriminations ringing in his ears? ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t hate you, but I’m sad – I’ll miss you.’

‘Oh God,’ Terry said, feeling ashamed for his sister’s sake. ‘I’ll send for you, Bridie, when I’ve …’

‘You know I can’t leave here,’ Bridie said quietly, and she put her arms around Terry and kissed him on the cheek and left him, sobbing.

Terry left in August 1928 and, in the early weeks, Bridie often felt she couldn’t go on. She saw the farm for the first time as Terry had seen it: one relentless round of work with never an hour, never mind a day, off to do with as she pleased.

At first, she sought her bed straight after the evening meal, so tired even her bones ached. However, bit by bit, her body became accustomed to the hard physical work and she had a wage to be picked up at the end of every week to look forward to, though her parents had balked at that initially.

‘But why do you want a wage, Bridie?’ Sarah had asked.

‘Everyone has a wage, Mammy, if they do a job.’

‘Yes, of course, if you work outside the home,’ Sarah had conceded. ‘Here you get your meals and clothes bought for you when you need them.’

‘Ah, but d’you see, Mammy, that’s it,’ Bridie had said. ‘You say I have clothes when I need them, but really you mean your choice of clothes when you think I need them. As for meals, wouldn’t anyone working here be fed?’

‘Well, yes,’ Sarah had had to agree. ‘But …’

‘There isn’t any but in this, Mammy,’ Bridie had said, hardening her heart against her parents’ confused faces. ‘There has been no cost to you in working clothes, for I’m wearing Terry’s.’

She was, too, although they had been refashioned. By taking in the crotch and chopping inches off the legs of the breeches and cutting down the work shirts, repositioning the buttons and chopping the sleeves to fit, she had her made them fit her just right.

‘I’d like the same as Rosalyn earns in the shirt factory,’ Bridie had said. ‘Less what she pays in keep. I think that’s fair.’

‘Fair or not,’ Jimmy had said, ‘none of our other children have demanded a wage for working their own place.’

‘It’s not my place, it’s yours,’ Bridie had reminded him. ‘And I know Terry asked for a wage because he told me. Maybe if he’d been given one he’d have stayed longer.’

‘Are you threatening me, Bridie? I’ll not stand that,’ Jimmy had blustered. ‘Big as you are …’

‘Daddy, I’m threatening no one,’ Bridie had said gently. ‘I’m just stating facts. I’ll work as hard as I’m able, but I need money of my own.’

Jimmy had knocked his pipe against the hearth, filled it with infinite slowness and drew on it. He had no wish to alienate his darling daughter ‘Well,’ he had said at last, ‘I think what Bridie has suggested is only fair.’

Sarah had looked at him, open-mouthed, while Bridie had reached up and kissed her father’s stubbly chin. ‘Thank you, Daddy,’ she had said. ‘I appreciate you listening to me.’

She had missed the look that passed between her parents, the one that said they’d raised a treasure, a daughter in a million, for that treasure, worn-out by hard work, had taken her weary bones to bed.

Francis wondered if Bridie had any idea of how fetching she looked as she worked the fields in her brother’s cut-down clothes. She was like a wean dressing up, except no wean had a figure like the one she was developing. Her eyes were like pools of dark brown treacle and could flash fire, but mainly sparkled with laughter, and however her hair was tied back, curls would always escape. Sometimes just to look at her could stop the blood pulsing in his body. He knew he could do nothing about it but look, for the girl was his niece and yet but a child. But God, if things were different …

Francis was on his way to the McCarthy house for a rambling session with these thoughts churning in his head. In the late autumn and winter, with the harvest safely gathered in, rambling nights were popular in the country houses.

Word got around that a rambling was to be held at such a house and neighbours and friends would come from all over. The men often had an instrument with them and always a drink of some kind. It was usually poteen, which was brewed in stills in the hills of Donegal, as everyone knew but no one spoke of.

The women would bring slices of soda bread, or barn brack or similar, and sometimes a bottle of homemade wine, and in an instant a party would begin with the rag rugs rolled up for the dancing.

One of Bridie’s earliest memories was of lying in her bed, her toes curling with excitement at the tantalising music and the rhythmic tap of the women’s feet as they danced on the stone slabs of the cottage floor below. There’d be a break halfway through when they’d eat and drink deeply and talk. The murmur of voices would rise and fall, sometimes heated and raised in argument, sometimes quieter and gentler. But the music would always begin again and she’d go to sleep with the tunes running through her head.

Now, though, Bridie was allowed to stay up for the rambling. She had turned out of her work clothes and after a wash from the basin in her room, she had changed into her second-best dress and was ready with Sarah to greet the first arrivals.

Francis was one of the last guests to arrive and there was a whistle of approval as he drew a large bottle of poteen from beneath his coat. ‘I hope you didn’t get that from Tommy Flaherty?’ one of the men said. ‘I heard the Garda are after him.’

‘Christ, haven’t they been after him for years?’ another put in. ‘Haven’t caught him yet?’

‘He’s too wily a fox for them,’ said the first man.

‘Anyway,’ Francis said. ‘They’re only cross because he won’t supply them. They like a drop the same as the rest of us.’

‘The priests do at any rate, I know that,’ said Jimmy. ‘I passed on a bottle to Father O’Dwyer once and he was delighted with me so.’

‘Aye,’ Francis said. ‘Did you hear the one about the young curate from England who came to help out a country priest in Ireland? He’d had a man in confession admitting to making poteen. As he’d never heard of such a thing before and wasn’t sure of the penance to give him, he went to the older priest and said, “There’s a man here making poteen. What shall I give him?”

‘“Well, be careful now,” said the older priest. “These men would fleece the likes of you. I never give more than three and six a bottle.”’

There were gales of laughter at this. ‘It’s right enough too,’ one said when the laughter had died down. ‘Stingy buggers, priests.’

‘Come on,’ Jimmy cried. ‘The night’s running away with us and we’ve not played a tune yet.’

Bridie helped the women pile food onto plates on the big table, but surreptitiously watched the dancers. Mary had taught her some dances before she went away, but she’d not performed any since she’d left and was surprised how much she remembered. One of the women, seeing her watching, seized her hand and pulled her in to join them and she danced along with the rest.

She was glad when a halt was called for the food – the sweat was running from her – and she slipped outside for the night air to cool her down, walking a little way away from the house towards the orchard.

When she heard footsteps behind her she turned, expecting it to be one of the other women as hot as herself and taking the air, but it was her uncle Francis.

Bridie hadn’t forgotten her earlier encounter with her uncle, but had passed it off as a one-off experience and not something to be too worried about. And yet she felt alarm as she remembered her uncle drinking deeply of the poteen that evening.

But, she told herself, she could come to no harm. She could see the light of the cottage, other people were no distance away. She was safe and so she relaxed a little. ‘I think you’re avoiding me, Bridie,’ Francis said, wagging his finger in the exaggerated manner of the drunk.

‘Not at all,’ she said.

‘Oh, I think so,’ Francis said. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face him. ‘Are you afraid of me?’

‘No. No …’

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Francis said. ‘Have I ever hurt you?’

‘No.’

‘Am I likely to then?’

‘I don’t suppose so.’

‘So you won’t object to giving me a kiss?’

‘No,’ Bridie said. ‘But only on your cheek.’

‘Jesus, that’s a wean’s kiss,’ Francis said and, before Bridie could respond further, clasped her tight against him again, but this time his other hand caressed her breasts and began fumbling at the fastenings of her dress before she managed to break free. Her dress hung half open, the bodice underneath exposed and the hair she’d spent hours putting up hanging in untidy strands around her face, which was red with shame.

‘You mustn’t do such things,’ she said, turning her back on her uncle to fasten herself up and tidy her hair. ‘What if I was to go to the house and say?’

‘Say what?’ Francis said. ‘I’d say you led me on. You left the house first, remember. What if I say you’d arranged it all. No one will blame a man for taking what’s on offer.’

‘You wouldn’t do that!’ Bridie cried, swinging round to face Francis again. ‘You wouldn’t be so cruel!’

But as she looked into his face she knew he would and, what’s more, she knew he’d be believed above her. Maybe her parents would believe her, but even then there would be doubt and suspicion. ‘Why do you hate me so?’ she cried in distress.

‘Hate you!’ Francis said incredulously. ‘How can you say such a thing, Bridie? I love you. You are incredibly beautiful. It almost hurts to look at you, but you’re a temptress. You tempt men with those big eyes, with those long eyelashes you flutter so seductively, your luscious figure, your young beautiful breasts, your …’

‘Stop it! Stop it,’ Bridie commanded. ‘You mustn’t talk this way, Uncle Francis. It’s the drink talking.’

‘Aye, maybe it is at that,’ Francis said, but he knew this feeling he had for Bridie never went away, it was just when he was sober he could keep it in check.

‘I’m going back to the house now,’ Bridie said. ‘Don’t follow me, please …’

Francis said nothing as she walked away and once in the house, she pleaded a headache and said she was ready for her bed. ‘I thought the air might clear it,’ she said, explaining her previous absence. ‘But it didn’t.’

‘I wondered where you’d disappeared to,’ Jimmy said. ‘Did you see Francis on your travels?’

‘Yes,’ Bridie said. ‘He’s over by the orchard,’ and then she fled to her room, closing the door before she let the tears fall.

By the time Bridie was sixteen she was beginning to feel desperate about Francis, for try as she might to avoid him, he seemed to find many occasions when he would get her on her own. Even when he just ogled her, it made her feel sick, but sometimes, usually when he’d had a drink, he wasn’t content with that alone.

Bridie didn’t know what to do, where to go for help or advice. She was at her wit’s end when she decided to write to Mary, though she knew it would be hard to commit such words to paper for even to think of them made her face flame with embarrassment.

Dear Mary,

Please help me. I am having trouble with Uncle Francis and I don’t know what to do. He looks at me funny and sometimes touches me and kisses me. I’ve told him to stop and that I don’t like it, but it makes no difference. I’ve even said that I would tell Auntie Delia, but he just laughed. He knew I would never do that, but what should I do, Mary?

She couldn’t totally avoid her uncle because she couldn’t physically manage some of the jobs on the farm. Frank had readily agreed to help her with the heavy stuff, but it was usually her uncle Francis who came to give her a hand, giving the excuse that Frank was busy with something or other.

Mary had become angry as she’d read the letter and more by what her sister didn’t say than the words she actually used. It brought back to her mind the time she was fourteen. ‘Dirty bloody pervert!’ she exclaimed, tossing the letter to Eddie. ‘Read what our Bridie has written. God, it’s almost unbelievable. Uncle Francis, for God’s sake!’

Eddie jiggled his baby son in his arms as he scanned the page. ‘She doesn’t say much,’ he said at last.

‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she?’ Mary cried. ‘What d’you want, that she explains it to you chapter and verse? What she says and hints at is quite enough to tell me what’s going on.’

‘Why doesn’t she kick the man in the balls if she’s so bothered about it and tell him to behave himself?’ Eddie asked.

‘It’s not as easy as that,’ Mary said, knowing full well the dilemma Bridie would have found herself in. ‘I should have gone over to see her this summer, especially with Aunt Ellen’s rheumatics starting up again and being unable to go herself.’

‘You knew nothing about this in the summer,’ Eddie reminded her. ‘And then the money was an issue with Junior here taking such a lot of it. There was your aunt being laid up too. How could you have just upped and left for a week or two?’

Mary knew she couldn’t have done, not really, but she felt guilty about her sister. She promised her she’d be home the following summer and until then advised Bridie to be very careful of her uncle and try to avoid situations where she might find herself alone with him and to make sure she never, ever encouraged him in any way.

At the end of the letter she suggested that she should perhaps broach the subject with her mother. But when Bridie received Mary’s reply, she screwed it up in impatience.

What the Hell did Mary think? That she encouraged, even enjoyed, the advances of a man she thought of as a fatherly figure? And didn’t she think she’d tried to avoid being alone with him? The fact that the farm was isolated in many areas made that almost impossible. And as for telling her mother … Well, that was a non-starter.

What had she expected, she asked herself, that Mary would come up with some plan to scupper her uncle? She didn’t know, but she did know she viewed the future with dread and would continue to unless she could find some sort of solution. Each day now she woke up with a dead weight in her heart and a stomach turning somersaults in case she should have to ask for help in some area of the work. She wished someone could tell her how to deal with it.

By the late spring of 1930 the situation between herself and her uncle had got worse rather than better and she knew something had to be done, and so she decided to take Mary’s advice and speak to her mother.

It was not a success. Sarah truly didn’t see there was a problem, or chose to misunderstand what Bridie was trying to say. Bridie, knowing of her mother’s naïvety, chose to believe the former. Not that she was experienced herself, but every nerve in her body cried out that what her uncle was doing was wrong. Yet, unless she was able to describe in detail what her uncle said and, more importantly, where he touched her, which she couldn’t begin to explain to her mother; she’d never understand. ‘What do you mean, you don’t like him kissing you and holding you?’ Sarah demanded. ‘Hasn’t he done that since the day you were born?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘But nothing, Miss. God, Bridie, I hope you’re not getting above yourself, I thought you had more sense.’

‘I have, Mammy. It’s just that …’

‘I hope you haven’t been bothering your father with this nonsense? You know what he thinks of Francis. God, I’d hate to be the person that came between them.’

No, she’d said nothing to her father, she wasn’t a fool altogether. And she didn’t want to be the one that would separate one brother from the other either as her revelations certainly would. She realised in that moment that she was on her own and not even Mary’s promised visit in August of that year could lift her spirits.

However, Mary believed every word her anguished sister had written to her, and with reason, and was furiously angry on her behalf. She intended to seek her uncle Francis out at the first opportunity and put the fear of God into him.

But when Mary eventually arrived back home she was the feted daughter, welcomed home with Aunt Ellen, now semi-recovered from her rheumatics, and wee Jamie, an enchanting toddler turned two years old, who enthralled Jimmy and Sarah and even Bridie.

It was almost a week before Mary got her chance to see her uncle Francis without anyone else in earshot. She’d said nothing to Bridie of her intention and now she faced her uncle across the field of ripening hay he was surveying.

Her stomach churned as she looked at him. He seemed so harmless. But she hardened her heart against him for Bridie’s sake. ‘I believe you’ve been giving our Bridie a hard time recently?’

‘Not at all. What’s she been saying?’

‘Never mind. She’s said enough,’ Mary snapped. ‘We won’t go into it now – you’d just deny everything, I imagine, and then I’d get angry, because I’d stake my life on Bridie telling the truth. All the years of her growing up, I’ve never known her lie.’

‘I demand to know what she’s complained of,’ Francis said. ‘How else can I protest against it?’

‘Don’t even think you can,’ Mary answered scathingly. ‘If you examine your conscience, you’ll know what Bridie has complained of. And I’m telling you it has to stop, here and now. You think if she complains she won’t be believed, she’s even told me that. Well, let me tell you, if this doesn’t stop, the letters she’s sent to me, telling me what you try to do and what you say, will be given to prominent people in your life. Aunt Delia, for example, or Father O’Dwyer. Believe me, if you do not leave my sister alone she will not be the one painted black in this instance because I’ll tell my tale too. Some people might then begin to wonder about Sally McCormack so think on, Uncle Francis.’

Francis began to bluster. ‘Mary, for God’s sake. You know there was no proof that I’d ever touched that gypsy brat. As for your sister … Well, let’s just say she has a vivid imagination.’

‘And me? Have I a vivid imagination too?’

‘You misunderstood me.’

‘Like Hell I did,’ Mary spat out.

‘Look, Mary, Bridie has got the whole thing wrong, out of proportion. That’s all it was and that’s all I’m prepared to say on the subject.’

‘Well, it isn’t all I’m prepared to say,’ Mary barked out angrily. ‘I don’t care what label you put it under, or how you try to justify it, if she writes to me in the same vein again, you will have cooked your goose as far as your family, your wife and your standing in the community are concerned. I hope you understand that.’

Francis understood all right. He stood at the crossroads of his life and he knew if he was to go forward, Mary would ruin him. Somehow, he had to control the fascination Bridie held for him in order to keep the life he had and, though he made no reply, Mary knew she’d frightened him and dearly hoped it was enough to help her sister.